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When do I use der, die, das?

Not really. With compound nouns (e.g., das Auto + die Bahn = die Autobahn) it's the last noun in the compound that determines the gender. There are some common suffixes (-keit, -heit, -ung, and so on) that sort the words into a certain gender. But knowing the gender of an arbitrary word like "Tisch"? Alas, no rule.

Some general rules are: DER: the following are all generally masculine: -Male professions -Male nationalities -Days, months, seasons Words ending with: - 'ing' & 'ling' -'ant' & 'ent' - 'ist' & 'og' - 'ismus' & 'ism' - 'en' (except verbs used as nouns) - Alcoholic drinks (except 'Bier', which is das)

DIE: the following are generally feminine: -Female professions & nationalities Words ending with: - 'e' , 'ie' & 'e' (several exceptions to this) - 'ung' & 'ion' - 'heit' & 'keit' - 'ik' & 'ität' - 'schaft' - Countries of Switzerland & Turkey

DAS: The following are generally neutral: -Verbs used as nouns -Most town/ country names -Young animals -Metals (mostly) words ending with: - 'chen' & 'lein' Words starting with: - 'ge'

General rules, so there are more exceptions than I have here, but good rules generally. Hope that helps.

Just gotta learn what goes with what for each noun seperately unfortunately

But there are easy ways of doing that… if you start early enough.

You'll need to imagine a train station (der Bahnhof, Masculine), a castle (die Burg, feminine) and field (das Feld, neutral)… every time you come across a new noun, you can imagine it in either of those 3 environments, and you have your first ,Eselsbrücke' to help you remember.

Obviously, you could choose 3 other locations, the point is one M, one F and one N.

Does this help?